Low-overhead TRNG based on MUX for cryptographic protection using multiphase sampling

作者：Yao, Liang; Liang, Huaguo; Lu, Yingchun^*

来源：Journal of Supercomputing, 2023, 79(15): 17170-17186.

DOI：10.1007/s11227-023-05349-2

• Two-input multiplexer
• Hardware security
• Multiphase sampling
• High portability
• Lightweight

True random number generator (TRNG) is built on hardware-based non-deterministic noise for generating keys, initialization vectors, and random numbers, and it plays an important role in various applications that require encryption protection. In this paper, a true random number generator based on MUX unit multiphase sampling is proposed by investigating the frequency jitter mechanism. The scheme is based on the "soft macro" design of the MUX unit, which replaces the traditional look-up table entropy scheme. It completes high-precision jitter sampling on the basis of ensuring the fairness of the TRNG entropy source and can be well transplanted to a series of FPGAs. The proposed TRNG is verified on three FPGAs of Xilinx Virtex-6, Artix-7, and Virtex-7. The experimental results show that the generated random sequences are of good quality, passing the NIST SP800-22 tests with higher p-value and NIST SP 800-90B tests with higher minimum entropy, while achieving 100 Mbps throughput. It is worth mentioning that the resource overhead consumed by the proposed TRNG is small and unitary, only consuming 4 MUX units, 5 DFFs, and 1 LUT unit, which has a good application prospect.